


Value Me

by Kuronrko98



Series: Maladaptive Daydreaming Work: The Cube and Related Universes [10]
Category: Original Work
Genre: And this is a long time coming, M/M, Scars, do not copy to another site, they're very gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 14:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20292787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuronrko98/pseuds/Kuronrko98
Summary: Connor's chilling with one foot in the Cube and one foot stuck in the In-Between. He's trying to make the best of it, mostly by hanging out with his... friend.





	Value Me

**Author's Note:**

> This was for a prompt, 'Value Me', in which one character tells another how they feel about them.

Dominic and I never really used to hang out much. When I first came back to the Cube, he was working in the Lounge and I was trotting after Jesse like a lost dog. We had no choice but to tolerate each other in Furnace because, well. Virtuoso and the splinter decided to put us in the same cell for some reason.

Which one of them actually did that, I’m not sure. I doubt I’m going to ask.

I’m not sure when it happened but by the time Sawyer made it to Furnace we weren’t just tolerating each other anymore. I never got time to actually process him dying while I was down there with all the other death and the planning. I guess Jesse and I are too similar in that respect: We say ‘later’ when shit happens and when later comes we still don’t know how to deal with it.

All that to say, the Cube is weird and my not dead… friend has been complaining about the woes of working for a vampire for the better part of an hour. Every so often, he scratches at the corners of the bright blue bandage around his elbow and I wonder when Jess set the donation system up. I missed that part. I missed a lot.

Some things, I think I just didn’t want to see. Or was too stupid to see.

We found a window in the halls—rarer than it sounds—and I got the Cube to give us a table, some chairs, and a plate of snacks to look out into the In-Between and kill time. I have a lot of that, lately, with how distracted Jesse is. Not that I mind, I would have to work a little harder to have days like this if I was with them all the time.

It’s nice, though. He gestures around with one hand while I study the other. He has a lot of scars that simply weren’t there while we were in Furnace. That’s the excuse I use, anyway.

“They could do it all themself!” Dominic rubs his temple with his free hand. “Jesse told them to back off a little, but I still get all the hard work.”

“Dishes.” I don’t look up from his hand. Scars criss-cross over his knuckles, and as I watch they shift around under my fingers. Re: the Cube is weird as _ shit. _ “Truly the harshest of punishments.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know. I can talk to them if you want.” 

I run my thumb along a newer scar, barely healed, stretching from his middle knuckle down past his wrist. It tells me, in a whisper that snakes through my nerves, that it came from the river. It shifts out of sight once I’ve touched it, but it’ll be back before long.

“They aren’t your biggest fan, either,” he points out. “Or did you forget?”

“They still listen to what I have to say sometimes.” 

That’s better than they do for him, at least, but I don’t say that. Instead, I try not to flinch when I touch an old cut on his palm. It doesn’t so much say anything as it does wrench a sob through my blood and echo in my head.

“Okay, _ I _ felt that.” He pulls his hand away and I just stare at the space it took up just a second ago. “You’re snooping.”

“Don’t blame me for what your hands have to say,” I say after a second, then turn a smile on him. I hope that’s not actually worry on his face, let it just be me projecting. “It’s called _ gossiping_.”

He just shakes his head and looks out the window. It isn’t much of a view, I know it, but there’s plenty out there. Virtuoso and the splinter are out there, somewhere.

My body’s out there.

He lets me take his hand back, and this time I’m a little more careful about where I put my fingers. The oldest of the scars talk less, they can’t tell me exactly what happened, just the afterimage. If he didn’t remember them, though, they wouldn’t still be there.

A knick from working the canteen in Furnace, but not the one we just came out of. It was silent, it tells me, and Jesse had a sour look on their face when they came over to stop the bleeding. He made a joke to try to break the tension, but it didn’t help. It made it worse, it always did, the scar wonders why he kept trying that for so long.

“Hey, Nick.”

Another one, newer, from a day full of laughter. Even when Donovan and I were wrapping the thing up with not-so-sanitary rags, the room was full of it. It was while Sawyer was in solitary. The scar lingers on certain details I wouldn’t have expected him to remember.

“Yeah?” He doesn’t look at me. He traces shapes on the glass. It’s a little unnerving how the oily colors still react, even from the other side.

One asks _ me _ what happened, and I don’t know what I could possibly tell it. It’s a tiny triangle on his knuckle, so it’s a little. Weird? I guess?

“Am I reading too much into this, or is this a date?”

A perfect circle, old enough to be dangerous, claims mounds of guilt. A burn and sharp words it can’t quite recall. Before it can give me a clearer picture than that, Nick’s hand whisks out of mine again.

“_What?_” he squeaks. Shit, that’s new and I don’t know what it means coming from him.

I shrug and rest my head in my hand to hide the flutter of panic in my chest. I hope I’ve _ actually _ been getting a better handle on keeping my thoughts out of the air. “It just—it feels like one. Right?”

Fuck, fuck, was I wrong?

He stares at me, eyes wide. The bluest of blues, the only thing he inherited from his father and the only thing the Collective ever sees. After a few seconds of silence—this boy’s gonna kill me—he just clasps his hands in his lap and looks out the window.

It stretches, a tension that hurts my bones, until he sighs.

“Back in Furnace, you said—” He cuts himself off. “Did you mean it?”

I hesitate. Where is this going?

“I said a lot of things in there,” I say slowly. “But I don’t think I said anything I didn’t mean.”

“You said I’m not like my dad.” His voice doesn’t waver, he doesn’t look away from the window. But his hands curl into fists and his shoulders tense. A wave of static anxiety zips through the air and I’m not sure if it’s from him or me. “Did you mean that?”

Oh.

“I never met him,” I blurt before I can actually process the right way to answer. When there’s still a buzz on my skin from the static in the air I’m a little frazzled, okay? “But, uh—I know what he did. To the clones, at least, I know a _ lot _ about what he did. And I know what, you know. What people think because of his—.”

He jerks a hand up to his face, to his _ eyes_, and _ no. _ No, I have a point I’m getting to.

“I—” I swallow, try to put the words in the right order, to find the right way to package the truth that’ll stop him tracing his fingers over the dip under his eye. “I got to see a lot of you in Furnace. In less than ideal conditions that most people would use as an excuse to be their worst selves—I mean, just look at what happens whenever the Collective mixes with that place.”

I’m rambling, I know that, but he jerks slightly to peer at me out of the corner of his eye. That’s progress, I think.

“I saw a lot of what you wanted Sawyer to see.” It’s my turn to turn my gaze away from him when he actually turns his head all the way. My mouth is gonna get all mixed up if I look him in the face, I just know it. “And towards the end I got to see what’s left of what I think your dad wanted you to be.”

“You were scared,” he mutters. “When I snapped at you.”

I shake my head at the platter of tiny sandwiches on the table. “I shouldn’t have been. I was still tangled up in Sawyer’s head and—and you know how they are. Were. I don’t know if they’ve changed at all on that front, I guess.” 

“They have.” His level gaze, when I glance at him, is right on me. All clear blue and it has me frozen for a much different reason than it did back in Furnace. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Wh—_ oh._” I return to my study to the crumbs on the plate. “Like I said, I saw a lot of you. I’d like to think I saw the real thing under all the masks you were wearing. And I think—” 

I have the words right there.

“—you know, uh—” 

I just have to _ say _ them!

“—I liked what I saw, you know?” I breathe it out in a soft wheeze. But it doesn’t come out on its own because of course it doesn’t. Once I have my breath again, I can’t shut myself up. “Tired and ignored and something completely different than what anyone wanted to make you be. All those nerves, and it all goes into protecting people you’re convinced hate you!”

I look back to him, head on, and don’t quail when I meet his eyes. Surprised, wide, and not a mask in sight. No shivering fear, no cold dismissal. It’s just him, and I’m so _ mad _ at everything that lead to him thinking he had to be anything else.

Then again, these days I’m kind of mad at everything.

“So, yeah.” My voice comes out a little weak, but I literally could not care less. “I meant it.”

It hangs in the air, quiet, for a few seconds. Then a pleased smile spreads across his face and my heart stutters a little in my chest. _ Jesus. _

“Okay.” He pops a sandwich in his mouth. “It’s a date. Now let me talk to your scars, it’s no fair you got to talk to mine.”

I grin and scoot closer to offer my hand. It takes him a minute, I think, to tap into the Cube enough to really hear them. That’s okay, though, since I’m kind of trying to recover and remember how to breathe right now.


End file.
